SFU’s women’s soccer team has been pretty good so far this season. Sporting a 5-3-1 record going into Saturday’s game, they’ve played well enough to hang with the top teams in GNAC. A particular stand-out has been the offensive play of freshman forward Emma Pringle, who currently has seven goals and one assist in eleven games played. I was hoping that this would be my chance to finally see the Clan win, as it’s been a dismal two months covering these teams so far. I’ve seen the Clan get smacked around by UBC, Trinity Western, Nowhere State, and Central Whocaresville University, but this time was going to be different. This time I was watching a good SFU team. And all they had to do was beat what I thought was a mediocre Montana State Billings Yellowjackets.

Before last Saturday, I had never gone to a Homecoming event before and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I thought that it was supposed to be a big deal. It sure sounds like it’s supposed to be a big deal. My aunt, who is the alumni director at a private American school, is always busy in the fall as she preps for Homecoming, and from the sound of it, there it’s a BIG DEAL. But when I was at SFU, I never heard anything about it. Did they even have Homecoming events at SFU while I was there? Regardless, I was curious to see what SFU had planned for this year and if any alumni would show up. And given that this was supposed to be a potentially winnable game for the Clan football team, I had high hopes for the event all around!1

Penalty on Trinity Western. Two minutes for breaking the Community Covenant.

Regional rivalries are the best rivalries. Whether it’s Calgary vs. Edmonton, Texas vs. Oklahoma, USA vs. the world, everyone loves a good fight between neighbours. Proving the superiority of our community/city/country is the reason we have sports. “Where we live is awesome and where you live SUCKS!” If I can’t shove my community’s superiority in your face, then what’s the point of having a superior community? And what better way to do it than have the guys wearing our community’s jersey beat the everloving crap out of the guys wearing your community’s jersey. Rivalries between neighbours are great because the rivalries are personal. They exist not just in the sports world, but in our daily lives. Sure, I might not know any of the UBC athletes personally, but I definitely know a bunch of snotty UBC grads, and sports gives me an opportunity to prove to them that their school is CLEARLY inferior to mine!1 That’s what rivalry is all about. That’s what sports is all about!

This is it. The big one. The sport to rival them all. Finally, I was going to see live college football. Yeah, soccer and hockey are all well and good, but this is the real deal. If I was going to find school spirit at SFU, it was going to be at a football game. This is where the magic happens. At least that’s what ESPN tells me.

Can you feel it? The seasons are changing. It’s cooler outside. The leaves are starting to change colour. Kids are going back to school and their parents won’t shut up about pumpkin spiced something or other. Fall is here! And that means one important thing.

If you thought the writing was amateur, check out these photography skills!

It had been a while since I’d been up to the highlands of Simon Fraser University’s main campus on Burnaby Mountain and I arrived a bit early to see if anything had changed since my school days. The much-celebrated new observatory now sits next to the AQ. There’s finally a Tim Hortons and a Starbucks on campus. They’ve even started construction on a Student Union Building!1 But for the most part, it was the same old SFU that I remembered. Same concrete buildings. Same seemingly-endless parade of stairs. Same fish in the koi pond. And the same Terry Fox Field where this past Saturday the Clan took on the UBC Thunderbirds in an exhibition women’s soccer game.2

Look at this schmuck. Look at his dumb smile. This guy thinks he’s made it. That he’s in the clear. You can almost see him thinking, “I’m free! Now my real life can begin!” What a moron. If he only knew that he was about to spend four years getting a useless Masters degree and end up stuck at a dead-end job with no hope of owning a broom closet (let alone a house) in his own hometown, this doofus would be sprinting back to the registrar’s office to change his major (again) and put off graduating for the next twenty years.

In case you haven’t clued in yet, this chump is me. I’m a graduate of Simon Fraser University. And I’ve decided to write a blog about the SFU Clan. Because I’m an idiot.